


Honour

by Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory



Category: My Fair Lady (1964)
Genre: British Colonial India, M/M, Warning: American author and therefore potential unintended abuse of the English language, Warning: said bookism, With special appearances by Mrs. Higgins, and WWI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 01:19:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2603282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory/pseuds/Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” he demands again.</p><p>His companion considers him with mild amusement.  “Is that all a woman is to you, Higgins, an inferior form of intellect?” </p><p>“Yes,” he snaps irritably,  “what the devil else might they be good for?”</p><p>His bemusement only seems to grow.  “Most men seem to enjoy their company in,” he clears his throat delicately, “less intellectual pursuits.”</p><p> </p><p>Yet another alternate ending, now with gay sex!<br/>Solidly movie musical ‘verse, diverges at the beginning of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honour

“Damn, damn, damn, damn!” He lets the door slam behind him and shies his hat angrily at the gramophone.

Pickering eyes him over the paper with mild disapproval at his outburst. “Went that badly, eh?”

“How the devil-” he demands.

“Your mother rang.” Pickering calmly folds the paper and sets it on a side table. “She advised me to let the both of you stew.” 

“Bah, women!” He slumps into the chair beside Pickering in disgust. “They’re incomprehensible! Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” he demands again.

His companion considers him with mild amusement this time. “Is that all a woman is to you, Higgins, an inferior form of intellect?” 

“Yes,” he snaps irritably, “what the devil else might they be good for?” Perhaps he ought to find a more receptive audience with which to share his keen observations, sometimes this particular man can be entirely too abstruse himself.

His bemusement only seems to grow. “Most men seem to enjoy their company in,” he clears his throat delicately, “less intellectual pursuits.”

He shudders. “Oh, dear Lord, Pickering, tell me you harbor no such base intentions towards that poor wretched creature.” He should be most displeased to see so many long months of tedious work put to waste. He didn’t mold her into something better to see her reduced to common harlotry.

That infernal smile is still playing on Pickering’s lips. “I must admit my own intentions have not been ‘entirely honorable,’ but I assure you, Henry,” the familiarity of address takes him aback, “those intentions were never directed towards Miss Doolittle,” the familiarity of the hand rested lightly on his knee more so.

“Colonel…” He is betrayed by that most faithful of servants, his own voice, rising in pitch and breaking on what ought to have been a stern rebuke.

The hand is withdrawn with grace. “Well, it seems our little experiment comes to an end. I should take my leave. It has been a pleasure working with you, Professor Higgins.”

As Pickering takes up his hat and coat, a very different sort of alarm overcomes him. All the constancy, dare he say companionship, in his life keeps getting notions and walking out that door with nary a by your leave and he’s having none of it. No, he simply won’t stand for any more of this nonsense…and it was nonsense, the impulse that made him stiffen under that fond caress.

“You shall do no such thing!” He seizes Pickering by the arm with a passion that surprises them both and kisses him properly. The great philosophers of antiquity, in their wisdom, had no such compunctions, why should he kowtow to the effeminized moral sensibilities of this henpecked age? What has the world come to when men can’t be comfortable being men, in all their natural virility, even in each other’s company?

Pickering blinks at him. “I’ll be dashed. I was beginning to think the girl was quite right and you didn’t have it in you.”

“Didn’t have what in me?” he demands still feeling querulous at the mention of that damnable creature.

“No feelin’ ‘eart.” It’s such a perfectly absurd impression that something does indeed constrict painfully in his chest.

“Chin up.” Pickering’s touch follows his words. “We’ll get her back. Well, I dare say you won’t at the rate you’re going, but I shall try my level best. I don’t think I could stand your company long without her.”

“I’m marvelous company!” He takes umbrage at that.

“Henry, I say this with great affection: your behavior is often appalling for a man of your station.”

“Ha! That’s rich coming from a fellow who just made lascivious advances towards my person…Now, do you intend to make good on them or not?” He gestures with more defiance than he feels up the stairs.

“If you’d allow it…I should like that very much.”

 

“We’re not to be disturbed,” he snaps at Mrs. Pearce on his way past her in the upstairs hall.

“Of course, Mr. Higgins,” she answers with a carefully neutral tone and a schooled expression he somehow finds far more disquieting than open suspicion.

He can’t get the door closed behind them quickly enough…nor decide what to do with himself once he has done so.

“How exactly does one go about…?” The proper words seem to escape him as he glances from the expanse of white duvet to his companion.

“Slowly.” The older man lays reassuring hands on his shoulders.

“Slowly,” he echoes, “yes, that seems wise…”

“And quietly.” He is kissed again gently.

Pickering…Hugh? Ought he to start thinking of him in that way? No, somehow that seems far more unnatural than anything else which is transpiring. Pickering eases them out of their suits, kissing him all the while.

“Have you truly…never…?” Pickering breaks his own rule of silence gazing down upon him in his nakedness with both longing and concern.

“I had no interest,” he confesses, irrationally self-conscious at the obvious eagerness of his body now.

“I’m not sure how I ought to feel about that…flattered I suppose?”

“Will you get on with it already!” With what he still isn’t entirely certain, but he very much needs something to be gotten on with, his traitorous flesh expressing it’s needfulness in anxious little twitches.

“Good God, Man!” he exclaims as those lips return, their tender ministrations now focused on the source of his need. “Is this what our boys are learning in India?”

“Hardly,” the tone is dry, “you could have had it from a lad in Whitechapel for a tuppence.”

A scandalized thrill courses down his spine. “Aha, no wonder you’re so solicitous of that urchin, if that’s the company you keep.” He’s never seen a more eager moral reformist than the man moved by his own guilt.

“Henry,” it’s a gentle chiding, but a chiding none the less, hands and lips stilling on his skin, “that was long ago, I was young… and foolish to have stooped so low.”

He takes a shaky breath. “Oh, very well, carry on, but don’t expect-”

“I don’t,” Pickering reassures him, caressing his fevered flesh. “Just this once, enjoy yourself, Henry?”

He can’t very well help doing so, overwhelmed, awash and adrift in sensations quite unlike any he has ever known. What ecstasy! If a woman’s sex brings even half this bliss to other men, he almost can’t blame the poor bastards.

“Oh, dear God,” he groans, “bring me every catamite whore in London and I would gladly shake their filthy hands and thank them each by name.”

The feeling of the pleased little chuckle low in Pickering’s throat renders him utterly undone, making sacrifice to Venus or whichever heathen god presides in these matters between men.

 

“Don’t you worry you’ll go mad?” He rouses himself enough from his gratified stupor to inquire, mesmerized by the practiced way he grips his own turgid flesh.

“At my age?” Pickering scoffs. “It’s expected that one becomes a bit daft.”

“You’re daft enough,” he counters, batting his hand away, and replacing it with his own fist…grown far more practiced than he would like to admit in the months they have spent in such close proximity.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a fine looking man?” Pickering’s fingers trail absently over his chest.

“My mother, I suppose…while she was bemoaning my lack of a wife no doubt,” he quips.

“You are, you know.” Pickering explores the musculature of his abdomen. “A fine specimen, a regular Adonis.”

“Don’t you dare wax poetic on me at a time like this.” He quickens his pace.

“Of course.” He fears he detects the hint of moisture about those kind eyes. “You’re not one to talk of love, you told me as much. I’m sorry, Henry. Please, just let an old man have his foolishness for a moment, allow me to imagine you might care for me as I do you.”

“Nonsense,” he exclaims, "of course, I care for you, you addlepated loon! What do you take me for, the sort of man who’d invite any Tom, Dick, or Harry into his bed?”

 

“Thank you, Henry,” Pickering says in a guarded tone that suggests he still doubts his affections are returned.

For the first time, he curses the reticence of his nature.

“No, it is I who should thank you,” he murmurs, his hands still trembling slightly as he tries to do up his cufflinks, “this has been a most illuminating exercise. I think I should be quite cross to see you in the company of another fellow now.” Perhaps women are not entirely incomprehensible after all… 

It is at that moment that they hear some commotion and he hastens in redressing intent upon investigating, but before he can make himself decent its source makes herself quite apparent, carrying on as usual.

“I don’t care if he’s with the bloody king in there!” The door flies open and then so does her mouth, brought up short at the sight of them.

The smile that slowly starts to dawn across her face is like the cat that’s got hold of the cream and the canary. She has no cause to look so smug. It’s not as if she could threaten him with the police. Who’d believe her word over his? No one, that’s who!

“I’ve changed me mind. I think I shall marry Colonel Pickering,” she proclaims.

“Marvelous!” Pickering exclaims, seemingly without the least bit of irony, “I would be honored, My Dear.” He kisses her hand.

“You…you hateful creature.” He blusters in a totally irrational temper. “Is there nothing you won’t do to spite me?”

She continues to beam triumphantly at him. “You said yourself: he’s got loads of money and we get on friendly like. Spitin’ you is just gildin’ the lily, ain’t it?”

“And you!” He rounds on Pickering. “You told me you weren’t the marrying sort!”

“You have an astoundingly short memory, if you doubt the truth of that.” That blasted bemusement is returned tenfold. “But I don’t see the harm in it so long as no one involved is being deceived.”

The infernal creature bats her eyes, the parody of innocence. “I don’t know what you’re on about, Guv’nor. I ain’t seen nothing amiss ‘ere. I’m a good girl, I am.”

 

“You’re a damn fool,” his mother observes, watching the happy bride and bridegroom glide across the dance floor.

“Language, Mother,” he scolds. “You’ve been spending too much time around that gutter wench.”

“There’s no nicer word for it, Henry.” She sniffs. “You’re a damn fool to have let that girl get away.”

“Well, she hardly ‘got away,’ now did she?” He allows himself a small smirk of self-satisfaction. She still keeps his appointments and fetches his slippers and she can even talk of Keats and Milton with a sharp wit that never ceases to astound and enthrall him, like a monkey that suddenly begins to tap dance. Every rule has its exception he supposes. He’ll admit he’s fond of her, just so long as she’s another man’s wife.

 

Epilogue

“What’s it like in India?” She rests her head against Pickering’s shoulder, clutching her fur tighter about herself, staring out the taxi window at the snow. “Is it really always warm there?”

“Always,” Pickering agrees. “All the Englishmen complain of it insistently…and it rains. Half the year it rains to beat the Dickins.”

“But it’s warm,” she says wistfully.

“Like the Lord himself dumping out his bathwater on one’s head, I expect,” he comments.

“Come now, where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I lost it on a boating trip up the Thames in my youth, fell right overboard after myself and the boat hook and floated downriver never to be seen again.” 

They both have a laugh at that. Sometimes he swears they conspire against him.

“Please,” she can beg so prettily when she wants, “I shan’t push you in the Atlantic, cross me heart.”

“The land of a thousand tongues, Henry. You know you want to hear it.”

 

The land of cacophony, the land of a thousand ghastly smells more like…a land so beautiful it could have been their Eden, but paradise is always too soon lost.

 

“Tell ‘im ‘e can't,” she demands tearfully, women and their hysterics.

“A gentleman must always put duty above his personal feelings, Eliza,” he says sternly.

In privet, he says, “You know damn well you’re too old to go to war.”

“Quite right, Henry, I’m old…and I want to die with my boots on, for God and Crown and all that.”

“Damn God, damn the Crown, damn the whole bloody Empire, and damn you!”

Pickering raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you quite finished?”

“No, I’ve only just started. I won’t beg you not to go, but if you don’t do your damnedest to return in one piece, I shall pursue you through the gates of hell and you shall never know a moment’s peace from my ire for all eternity.”

Pickering chuckles. “Your company’s a poor threat. I’ve grown accustomed to it.” His expression turns somber. “Look after her, Henry.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Promise me.”

A gentleman must always put duty above his personal feelings. “As I care for you, I shall care for her.”

Pickering sighs. “Well, I can’t expect much more than that, can I?”

 

“Try not to throttle him, Darling?”

“I shan’t. It’s beneath me. I’m a brigadier general’s wife.” Her posture is ramrod straight, her eyes dry, as she sees her husband off. 

When he offers her his arm, she eyes it as if it were one of the dancing snakes in the bazaar.

“Come, Mrs. Pickering.”

 

“You’ve never called me that,” she says quietly, looking at her lap, in the taxi on the ride home.

He sighs with an existential weariness. “A lady is more than her clothes and her speech. She is not distinguished from an imposter by birth or by marriage. A true English lady is a woman who knows her place and her duty and accepts these things with grace. Today, you became as much a lady as I have ever known, Mrs. Pickering.”

He can see her struggle to master herself against the waterworks. “I don’t much care for it.”

“You think any of us do?” The words carry far more bitterness than he intended to reveal.

“I suppose I did. I thought fine folk hadn’t a care in the world.” She glances up through her lashes at him and he sees her again for a moment, the dirty, little, lost waif. “I was happy, you know. Least, I thought I was happy before you came along putting your grand ideas in my head.”

He thinks back on that day. He too had supposed himself content and it had been the bliss of ignorance. “I wish to God I’d gone ahead and booked that ticket to Bombay.” They could have been literal ships passing in the night.

“Bollocks,” she says in a most common manner, “‘tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. That’s Tennyson, that is.”

“I never cared for Tennyson.”

She smiles sadly. “You never cared for ought…and now look what’s become of you, the Great Henry Higgins. He fell in love, Poor Bastard."

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback always welcomed.


End file.
